The cherries are ripe for the picking at Nichols Ranch and Orchard in La Luz, and anybody who loves fresh fruit owes it to themselves to make the scenic trip and grab a bucket.

“It looks like it’s going to be a pretty big crop this year,” said owner Bob Nichols, who ought to know. His family first harvested fruit on the ranch nearly a century ago, and it has owned it continuously since 1942.

Actually, the Nichols family history in the area goes back a lot further. Nichols said his great grandparents arrived as homesteaders from Texas in 1882 and farmed land to the south of what is now the ranch.

“They saw the orchards over here,” Nichol said. By 1923 they had acquired them. The family later sold the property in hopes of doing better over near Silver City but returned in 1942 and bought it back. Nichols was born there several years later and hasn’t left.

The 400 acre ranch lies on the slopes leading up to the Sacramento Mountains and enjoys panoramic views of the Tularosa Basin and White Sands in the distance.

Nichols said he currently has about nine acres of cherries, some of the trees originally planted by a homesteader named James Hill in 1903. Another 16 acres is apple trees, and another three or four is a mixture of apricots, prunes and plums. Somewhere there are some Bartlett pears as well.

The apricots won’t be ready to pick until the end of this month or early July, and the apple crop will be ripe by middle or late August.

But the cherries are ready right now, and visitors can drive up and pick as many as they want for just $4 a pound, plus reasonable care in taking just the fruit and stem without harming the leafy twigs from which they dangle.

“That’s next year’s crop,” Nichols said.

Nichols’s wife Sue helps her husband greet amateur pickers and is also glad to discuss her handsome paintings, which cover a good portion of one wall of the barn. They’re also for sale and worth a serious look.

Nichols said he expects to sell about half his crop to individuals and families who pick it themselves, many of them annual regulars. The rest goes to fruit stands and to the Cherry Festival in High Rolls coming up on June 18-19 with a share of the profits going to Lion’s Club charities.

“If the crop is big enough we’ll also sell to grocers,” Nichols said.

Nichols’s ancestors chose the land well. It came with a prolific spring that has maintained its flow throughout the family’s ownership except for a brief period a little over a decade ago when drought cut its production by about half.

“But after that hurricane came through in 2008, it stabilized again at the old level,” he said.

Nichols keeps a small herd of cattle on 25 permanent acres of pasture, but he depends for his living on the orchards.

“It’s my major income,” he said.

Here’s how to get there:

Find your way to the stretch of Highway 54 between Tularosa and Alamogordo.

Turn north on Dog Ranch Road, which you’ll find directly across the highway from McGinn’s Pistachio Tree Ranch, the one with the giant pistachio in the parking lot.

In about 1.7 miles turn right on Appler Road. Go 1.1 miles and then turn left on Laborcita Canyon Road. After 5.3 miles turn right onto Cottonwood Canyon Road.

The ranch is a little over two miles further. Watch for the signs and some flags.

Nichols hastened to add that there’s another you-pick-‘em orchard not far from his, the Mountain Farms orchard on Highway 82 between Alamogordo and Cloudcroft. It’s run by his lifelong friend James Cadwalter and wife Angie.

Visit either place and you’ve got the main ingredient for treats like the cherry chocolate cake recipe that appears elsewhere in this edition.